


The Stardew Effect

by RMWrites



Series: Joja Coffee Hour [1]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Did you even read a garden manual before you spontaneously quit your job?, Doing some Joja worldbuilding for funsies, Have you ever seen a cow??, How many farmers can emerge from one company? Far too many, I need sleep and it SHOWS but I thrive in the shamelessness my depravity provides, Loosely based on the thought that everyones farmer lives in the same world simultaneously, Morris is mentioned, Stardew Valley is pretty buck wild as a concept, The logistics arent there man, This man has a CONCERN, Trying to motivate myself to write more by writing my OC, Yall city slickers do you even know what crops are??, because whats funnier than one city folk turning farmer? many city folk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25890994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RMWrites/pseuds/RMWrites
Summary: A high-ranking Joja employee contemplates the enigma that is Stardew Valley and its siren call to about half of the quitting members of the Zuzu City Branch.
Series: Joja Coffee Hour [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902886
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	The Stardew Effect

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to motivate myself to get back into writing SDV content. Might do a Joja exploration/development fic at some point, but hmm.

It was a common trend in companies to have an uptick of departing employees before and after a change in management. Before, because there came a point where diligent workers had to draw the line in the sand, reached the end of their paramount patience with the company. After, because there were always people who weren’t happy with the new direction, employees who had been undermining the old system for years and were caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar, and management with shiny new nametags on their desks who decided that their first order of business was to cut cost by removing people from their desks.

None of this explained what was happening in the Zuzu City Branch.

That particular Branch never could seem to retain employees. First it was due to management skimming paychecks to fill their own pockets with the extra dollar or two from every single employee. Then they were cutting back employees until it was running at minimal capacity, while overworking them until several medical forms passed across his desk of collapsed personnel. Now there was what he had been privately calling “the Stardew Effect”, as it seemed that every other departure form that landed on his desk from that particular Branch ended up with new addresses in Stardew Valley, and not because they were transferring to Joja operations in that region.

Human Resources Director Percival Eadwulf let out a deep sigh as he stamped another employee file as officially resigned. He had been doing everything he could these past few months trying to wrangle the Zuzu Branch back in order, but no matter how many times he visited the Branch, how many managers he fired and retrained, the turnover rate far exceeded every other Company Branch and Store Outlet- combined. The numbers were outrageous, the percentages were through the roof, and no matter how many times he crunched the figures, _none_ of it made any sense. Perhaps it was something about the Valley itself that lured them in, but in all his research, the further he dug, the less he understood.

Stardew Valley, and its one township- Pelican Town- had very little economically in the past decade or two. The old mines hadn’t been operated in nearly forty years and it was through local bureaucracy that kept any company from coming in and prospecting again if only for wartime resources. Most of the farmland had been reclaimed by forests, and would take years to revitalize as profitable land. There were a few ranches and family farms dotted here and there, but they profited only enough to keep themselves self-sufficient and little else. Fishing was almost entirely nonexistent in this region, the commercial vessels moving to deeper waters elsewhere in the Republic. The town proper had been reduced to a few families and even fewer businesses, with empty buildings left to decay than being repurposed or torn down for safety reasons, as if the townspeople clung to some ideological hope that someone would come back to it at _some point_.

The only thing that seemed to make any money at all in all his research was a fair that was held every autumn which was something like a giant farmer’s market that city folk liked to go to for “authentic” country wares.

Absolutely _none_ of this explained why so many people were leaving the company from one specific Branch to move here, and even less so why many of them in their public records had been classified under “agricultural” land zoning.

Eadwulf doubted that any of these people had ever seen a _cow_ before, let alone know how to grow corn.

Was it something in the Zuzu City water supply? Were they getting some sort of brain rot from contaminated drinking water and spontaneously deciding that their job, which by some files they have had for _years_ , was too much that they thought _farming_ would be easier? A bunch of desk-jockeys and keyboard-clackers who thought the park nearby had too many insects all getting infested by some Stone-Age hive mind to go dig holes in the ground in a Valley known to have such drastic humidity and temperature changes that there were _tropical birds_ roosting in the trees over the summer and _colossal snowfall_ in the winter. Zuzu City had rather mild weather due to its geographic location- all these city transplants were going to get themselves _killed,_ by the environment or by their own ignorance. 

On top of it all, the District Manager for the region, a Mr. Morris if he recalled correctly, was pressing the issue of _buying_ one of the old buildings to repurpose as a warehouse- a fact that he had stumbled upon quite on accident from a misdirected email chain. For _what?_ A train went by every few days, but it went straight to Zuzu City from Port of Eclipses on the other end of the coast past Pelican Town with no need for stops. There were a few mining operations in Calico, but they had their own processing plants and warehouses nearby to keep everything contained, and the JojaMart that was in Pelican Town didn’t make enough profit to warrant a _damn warehouse_. They had _four employees_ for Yoba’s sake!

But Eadwulf wasn’t the Director of Finances, even though he very well should be. He had went to university to get his degree in finances and accounting, not how to manage people. He knew numbers, not humans. But whether he liked it or not, he was the HR Director by some cruel twist of fate by the current CEO, and he would do his goddamn best, which means getting to the bottom of this… this _phenomenon_ of Stardew Valley luring Zuzu City Branch employees into its green hills like a pied piper and causing resident JojaMart managers to think too big for their britches and trying to buy _dilapidated buildings_.

Eadwulf glanced over at the giant _2:34 AM_ displayed on his computer screen before opening up his schedule book, pen setting to paper as he plotted out his future course of action in regard to this mess. He would fix it. He had no choice.


End file.
